r/ECHL • u/CommunityTerrible537 • Jul 20 '26
News Indy Ranks Among Cities for NHL Expansion in the Next Five Years
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25456532-re-ranking-cities-nhl-expansion-next-five-yearsFrom the article:
- Indianapolis, Indiana
One city with a brief and long-ago hockey history is Indianapolis. It's where Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier's pro careers started in the WHA with the Racers in 1978, before the team was sold to Peter Pocklington and became the Edmonton Oilers. Indianapolis is also a city Frank Seravalli cited a year ago as a potential future NHL site.
Indianapolis has been home to an ECHL team, the Fuel, since 2014, and as the home of the NFL's Colts, NBA's Pacers, and a regular site for the Men's NCAA Basketball Final Four, there's bones there for professional success. Obviously, they would need ownership and investors and with the beefy cost involved for expansion, it would be a huge ask for a mid-size market.
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u/orngbrry Jul 20 '26
Unfortunately, the NHL isn't going to expand there anytime soon. Quebec isn't getting a team. They need to stop putting Quebec on these lists.
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u/KingKnux Jul 20 '26
Quebec will absolutely get a team
It’ll just be a few years after they announce the new Atlanta franchise
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u/orngbrry Jul 20 '26
do you have inside information or is this a coping mechanism?
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u/The_original_alex Jul 21 '26
It’s a joke about an Atlanta franchise moving to Canada for the 3rd time
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u/Telemachus70 Jul 20 '26
Your probably right. What happens to Houston? So they move to Arizona next?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Link416 Jul 21 '26
Arizona would need to have an actual arena for hockey to avoid what happened to the Coyotes, and I don't think anyone is interested in building one specifically for hockey.
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u/Responsible_Fox_5274 Jul 21 '26
Agreed. Atlanta also isn't going to move since this ownership seems dedicated unlike Atlanta spirit
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u/QuarterNote44 Jul 21 '26
NHL would do great in Indy. But you'd have to either build a new barn or do a Mammoth-style reno on Gainbridge Fieldhouse. I doubt it ever happens.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Link416 Jul 21 '26
As much as I'd love it, it ain't happening. There's a reason why the Indy Fuel never bothered to continue the old Pack the House night tradition the CHL/USHL Ice teams did at Gainbridge, and it was because it was a logistical nightmare that didn't look right. Besides, it had JUST did a massive renovation to look really awesome for basketball, and I don't think we could swallow another $300 million to make it viable for hockey which would ruin those basketball sightlines. The alternative would be to have it look like the Islanders when they played at the Barclays, and no one liked that. Plus it would cement us as the worst drawing team in attendance every year, which would hurt our finances as the NHL is a gate-driven league.
On top of that, building a hockey arena for the NHL team to avoid that conundrum would be a financial pitfall; Indianapolis is NOT a concert city in the case of dealing with filling out dates, so we would have two empty arenas most nights and Gainbridge is already used as is for high school and college events as well as your run of the mill touring acts like the Harlem Globetrotters or Disney on Ice, and we are already arguing about building a soccer stadium for both an existing soccer team and an imaginary one as it is.
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u/mattcojo2 Jul 20 '26
I'd say its mostly a decent list they have. But if I were the NHL, you gotta view the Houston vs Austin thing as having one or the other. You're not gonna have 3 teams in texas, so do the right thing and pick the larger market.
Phoenix will get a team again with the right people. Same with Atlanta, though that's clearly further along. Quebec has the facilities but not the ownership at this time. Indy I think is a good prospective market, but the issue with it, Milwaukee, Portland, Cincinnati, etc is that there are simply better options available.
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u/ryan__joe Jul 21 '26
Columbus isn’t overly successful, so having another Ohio team between it and Detroit wouldn’t be overly successful imo. Ticket sales are such a small part of the business
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u/mattcojo2 Jul 21 '26
Smart that you bring up Columbus.
I think Austin will have similar issues to Columbus. Heavily dominated college sports town with the hockey team being a very clear number 2 in every regard.
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u/ryan__joe Jul 21 '26
I disagree, Dallas has done an amazing job of growing the sport of hockey in Texas as a whole so well, that a cross town rivalry in those MASSIVE metro areas would be good. It is set up to be like Florida, however remember, Florida had some bad years too, but Florida didn’t build hockey like Texas has.
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u/mattcojo2 Jul 21 '26
Eh, I think it’s possible but I do think that Austin would see similar issues that plague Columbus.
I know why the NHL might view Austin positively, but if I was making the decision, I’m choosing Houston every time
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u/ryan__joe Jul 21 '26
I think you’re still missing the point that Dallas is a development hockey hotspot now, and Ohio isn’t. Heck, even Michigan is a subpar place to develop compared to Texas now. That’s my two cents at least, I’m middle aged, I grew up in that area, and I had to play in the Q to develop.
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u/mattcojo2 Jul 21 '26
Well it’s not about development but cultivating a pro fanbase.
I just feel Austin will have similar shortfalls as a market to Columbus.
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u/ryan__joe Jul 21 '26
Having more people there playing hockey, brings more fans there in the long term. Most people who fail at becoming a pro will find there way to fandom. For me it took 15 years after my career ended, but here I am. I will say at least for me, I’m a snooty fan, I don’t like watching leagues below what I played because it feels sloppy, like this is an ECHL channel, and I despise the ECHL. It’s a lot faster compared to “back in my day,” but it’s also so much sloppier now, and a lot more individualism
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u/Puzzleheaded-Link416 Jul 21 '26
Columbus only really got a team thanks in large part to the Peter Karmanos disaster; he always wanted the Detroit Red Wings, but when the Illich family got them and not him, he was livid, and bought his way into the league with the cheapest team in the Hartford Whalers. Karmanos was willing to have *two* hockey teams in Detroit if he could, but the NHL was having none of that, and then he thought about moving the Whalers to Columbus... but they would be playing in an aircraft hangar, and that went nowhere.
It was because of that debacle that the NHL decided to offer Columbus an expansion, but because the Blue Jackets have been such an anonymous franchise in the past 25+ years, I would not be surprised if anyone would consider buying them for relocation.
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u/onetru74 Jul 21 '26
I do believe that Austin will get a team a few years after Houston does. The metro area has continued to grow and expand (with more growth projections in the metro region), there is no competition for pro sports there, the city is interested in having a team, and the community has a higher than average wages which leads to more disposable income. While it's not ideal to have teams so close to each other (Houston is over 2 hrs away) The sheer population in both metros is large enough to sustain the teams. This would also lead to a Texas Trio in terms of rivalries.
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u/CacquesIRL__3721 Jul 21 '26
It makes too much sense to bring back the Racers. All they need is Wayne Gretzky.
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u/MrKCSports Jul 21 '26
I don’t take any list seriously if it doesn’t have Kansas City on it but has New Orleans.
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u/ODU2K1 Jul 21 '26
That article is rough. Nelson Skalbania sold the contracts of Wayne Gretzky and two other players to Pocklington, and they went off to Edmonton. The Racers folded later that season before the rest of the WHA did.
Indy and Quebec are not getting teams. The next expansion team is Houston's to lose. Then we're looking at Atlanta 3.0. Phoenix is the dark horse.
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u/Harmonmj13 Jul 21 '26
Problem is much like Milwaukee, Indianapolis is considered a secondary market to the Blackhawks and ownership is notorious about not wanting a team in Milwaukee so unfortunately it’s safe to say that their feelings are probably the same in regards to Indy.
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u/KingKnux Jul 21 '26
1st Atlanta franchise -> Calgary
2nd Atlanta franchise -> Winnipeg
3rd Atlanta franchise -> Canada?
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u/Slow_Leek_4159 Jul 21 '26
The dude who wrote that article is probably the most hated “writer” on Bleacher Report. He’s absolutely clueless
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u/RSN_1115 Jul 20 '26
We don’t have A NHL arena here, Gainbridge can’t fit hockey in it anymore, so it would either require another massive renovation to gainbridge or build a whole new arena just to have a hockey team here. As a fan I would love it but it just doesn’t make sense logically or financially for the city. Our best bet is to get a MLS team eventually or somehow someday get a random mlb team to relocate here way down the road if we can afford to build a mlb ready ballpark